Tag Archives: Esports

This latest report covering ACLPro – the Australian Cyber League’s huge Sydney 2014 event was submitted as both a long and short version. With plenty to cover over five games, the hope was to include a bit of the journey of the key combatants. There wasn’t enough room for it this time around, so enjoy a little more detail in the report below, including links to the full stream replays.

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Added to the schedule with the sweetener of a trip to France for the Esports World Cup (ESWC) Championships, the final came down to event favourite Muzza255 and Prodigy_V. Both chose Real Madrid letting individual playstyle decide the bout and it was Prodigy’s aggressive attacking game, winning 2-0 that earned him a trip to Paris.

Avant Garde had to make some big plays to get the monkey of their back by defeating Team Immunity, stepping up from their defeat at COD Championships to face Team Storm in the grand finals. The young team, with one of their members being only 13 – caused a huge upset and winning 5-2

Immunity’s LOL team kept the pressure on EX Dreamers with expert team fighting skills. EXD never gave up, aiming for some late game carries but Immunity weren’t to be denied, achieving a qualifying spot for the Oceana finals next to the already qualified Team Legacy.Starcraft 2 SC2 –
The SC2 event saw an epic Open bracket break down the best players into group stages, the best of which were seeded
into the Championship Bracket.

Weathering a solid comeback in winners finals from from Iaguz, KingKong and his dominant Zerg army booked another Grand Final. Not to be denied, Iaguz battled past the Protoss player Pigeon who overpowered Pezz and set up a rematch for his Terran army with KingKong. With a powerful economy, KingKong flooded the map with Zerg to follow his Brisbane win with a 4-0 victory proving himself head and shoulders over the competition.

Battle Arena Melbourne Melee champion Dekar disposed of another leader in the smash scene Caotic 3-0 in a commanding
semi final, before setting up a berth in the grand final after defeating Sydney’s Tedeth. Tedeth put a stop to Caotic’s comeback through the losers bracket to face Dekar in the grand finals. Dekar’s dominance of the ledge game saw him put aside Captain Falcon to use Marth to take out Tedeth’s Fox and win the event undefeated.

ACL Sydney was held at the Australian Technology Park, hosting a larger roster of competitions across five games, including some prestigious qualifiers.

FIFA
Footage:http://www.twitch.tv/aclpro/b/549289195
Muzza255 in blue, Prodigy_V in white
Timecodes:
2.25 players side by side
25min match highlights (goal replays)
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The FIFA final came down to event favourite Muzza255 and Prodigy_V, whose aggressive attacking game, saw him go undefeated in the tournament. He’s earned a trip to Paris at the Esports World Cup (ESWC) Championships, to play for Australia.
COD Ghostshttp://tv.majorleaguegaming.com/channel/acl
No timecode – can only play through! Planned for this and requested footage will update if able to obtain.

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Avant Garde had to make some big plays to get the monkey of their back by defeating Team Immunity, stepping up from their defeat at COD Championships to face Team Storm in the grand finals. The young team, with one of their members being only 13 – caused a huge upset and winning 5-2

Weathering a solid comeback from lower bracket by Terran Iaguz, KingKong flooded the map with Zerg to follow his Brisbane win with a 4-0 victory proving himself head and shoulders over the competition. Each of the top two players qualified for the next SC2 World Championship Series

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Melee champion from the recent Battle Arena Melbourne, Dekar’s dominance of the ledge game saw him put aside Captain Falcon to use Marth in the grand final against Sydney’s Tedeth and his StarFox and win the event undefeated.

This report covered the event I help run for CouchWarriors, Battle Arena Melbourne. It was a big success, with higher prereg and the biggest attendance of all fighting game events for the last two years. The full text of the report is below.

One of the largest national Fighting game events, Battle Arena Melbourne, saw hundreds of players converge to compete in more than 10 games for the iconic BAM boxing glove trophy and over 10,000 in cash and prizes.

As the first Australian event in the Capcom Pro Tour, competition was fierce, but community minded organisers Couchwarriors also catered for new players with a Free to enter New Challengers tournament. Pleasing the crowd with impressive skills, the final between Anzel and Shoki saw Anzel walking away with his very own BAM exclusive arcade stick. It featured art by special guest, Jeffrey “Chamba” Cruz of Udon comics fame. (Official Street Fighter comic artist.)

Another special guest was Mick Gordon, sound designer and composer oF Killer Instinct. He shared insights on the game’s development, and even stuck around to play casuals with the players. In an amazing final, the KI winner was Darth Wishh in his very first tournament.

Among the other winners, we saw Sydney’s Myke reclaim the Virtua Fighter throne from two time winner AlexMD, while Tones went back to back in Dead Or Alive 5 Ultimate, Melbourne mainstay Rame took out Tekken Tag Tournament 2, a close Adelaide-Sydney Final saw n-megabytes dominate Injustice and in an amazing skills showcase, Brisbane’s Baxter took first place in both King oF Fighters 13 AND Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3.

There was a huge crowd For Smash Bros across Brawl, Melee and the custom Project M. The amazing growth in the Smash community saw over 70 people compete just in Melee singles with Dekar walking out the champion.

Finally, vying for a trip to Singapore to compete in the South East Asia Majors, the final oF the 80-player Street Fighter 4 event was SL|Sol over DB|Toxy, who had won the 3rd strike tournament earlier. His beast mode Akuma wasn’t enough to overcome Sol’s Cammy to take out the top prize at the 6th Annual event.

I was pretty pleased with the copy, covering only three games gave me a bit more room in the minute approx of airtime to put across a bit more personality, a good fit for the GG tone and which played well in the news item. No long form this time, got a pretty good handle of what they were after and short form was all I needed for this one.

The final event of the year for the Australian Cyber League Pro circuit was held in Sydney with a mixed open entry and invitational tournament for Call of Duty Black Ops, Starcraft 2 and League of Legends.
Players qualified through performances in season play and yearly points to earn the right to play off for the title of 2013 champion.

League of Legends saw ACL Melbourne’s finalists facing off once again as the new blood in Team NV, formerly Wobbly Bears, battled Team Immunity. Immunity came back after a losing the first game – an epic 50 minute grind – before closing out the championship 2-1.

Footagehttp://www.twitch.tv/aclprolol/b/471816973
Match finish 1:27
Presentation 1:32Call of Duty Black Ops Grand final battle between team TRIDENT and IMMUNITY was extremely tight with regular lead changes and a clutch killstreak from Immunity’s Naked held off the challengers.

Starcraft 2
In a field full of strong players and upsets, the grand final matchup was between PIG, who knocked out the likes of Moonglade, and KingKong, a Korean student who convincingly schooled the competition in the way of the Zergling. A humble winner, he’ll spend his prize winnings on a car to get himself to uni.

Sydney finals – what events and competitions have led to this? How did players qualify?

ACL runs on a points based system – a mixture of online qualifiers and previous major events (Brisbane and Melbourne)
Players that have accrued enough points play off at the Sydney national championship finals

My latest esports news report for Good Game (see more about my reporting for GG here) finally allows me to report on my favourite scene, fighting games. Shadowloo Showdown (12-13 Oct 2013) is a great event, the second Melbourne major (see BAM) and one that the Shadowlogic team have worked hard to build as an international event. While BAM (Battle Arena Melbourne) and OHN (Ozhadou Nationals – Sydney) are majors that focus on Australian champions and interstate rivalries, SS centres on inviting players from overseas.

It’s a great way to expose local players to high level play – bring the internationals here. The latest SS took place in a beautiful new venue at the Flemington Racecourse. The lineup of guests was more modest than last year, but I expect that’s a positive to keep things more manageable. Being an organiser in the scene, I applaud this, and think that’s definitely a positive for the SS team.

Super Smash Bros
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Local team Dekar and Redact took out Melee, while in Brawl, Canadian entry Tinman, used an unusual character Olimar, cleverly outplaying and overwhelming opponents in a barrage of attacks.

King of Fighters 13 (KOF13)
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1st Xian (SG)
2nd Tokido (JP)
3rd Luffy (FR) (pronounced Louffy)
The last Aussies were knocked out in the early part of the top 8 Falco and Colonov as a stacked international bracket that saw top players Xian (Singapore) and Tokido (Japan) fight it out, This years Evo Street Fighter champ Xian took the crown.

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 (UMVC3 or just “Marvel”)
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Abegen (Japan) was a crowd favorite fighting through losers bracket with an unusual team of Tron, Thor and an incredible She-Hulk with heartstopping, crowd pleasing solo comebacks, but it wasn’t enough as Xian took out his second tournament win.

In the Grand Final Gamerbee, famously an Adon player, ran with Yun as his counter to Tokido’s Akuma which proved its value as a hard fought battle saw him win the first match and reset the bracket.
Yet the charismatic Tokido adjusted to impose a convincing win in the last set to finally win Shadowloo Showdown after four years of visits to Australian shores.

For my second eSports report for Good Game, I had the opportunity to report on the live LAN finals for one of the CyberGamer Professional League seasons, this time for Call of Duty on PC.

CyberGamer are far and away the leader in online ladder and league sites in Australian gaming, so it was great that they had a LAN finals, and to have a chance to highlight one of their events.

The staff and particularly key organiser Richard Lawes were fantastic in helping provide information, background on players and the league (the Q&A answers for my backgrounding questions, below, came from Richard), not to mention excellent quality footage from their event. Below is a version of the copy I wrote for the Good Game episode that aired on 10 September 2013.

After fighting through a seven week online league with 40 teams competing, Australia’s Top 8 Call of Duty 4 PC teams qualified for the LAN final in the Cyber Gamer Professional League Winter COD Championships. The community came together for an engaging event highlighted by many new faces competing.

A full weekend of gruelling Call of Duty, playing Search and Destroy in First to Fifteen, Best 2 of 3 bouts led to a climactic tussle between old rivals Frenetic Array and Team Exile5.

Each survived close semi final matches. Event favourites Frenetic array, have won two of last three national championships. They saw off semifinal challengers Coup de Gras to set their sights on Exile5, who had just staged a disciplined semifinal comeback from 15-10 down to defeat Avant Garde, a newer team pulled together from top players.

With the lion’s share of a $7,000 prize pool on the line, Frenetic Array, confident after defeating Exile5 in last year’s final, overcame Exile5’s defensive and strategic play with aggressive pushes relying on skilful individual shots to take down the Championship 2-1.

General Notes

Final

Exile5 against Frenetic Array

Long rivalry between the two teams

Exile 5 style?

Team Captain SpachalaExile 5:

Defensive style – aggressive at the right moments. Play defensive when at advantage. Discipline.

10-15 down in semi and came back round by round. Able to adapt at the right time and

Frenetic array style?

Team Captain Josh –

Aggressive, confident

Strong on individual skill and good tactical teamwork to make up for a lower emphasis on overall strategy

4 Perth 1 Melbourne

Proactive they were reactive managed to push ahead and stay ahead. Finding the opponent and making the kills by individually outplaying opponents

As a lazy blogger, I’m reposting my Facebook post on the inaugural PAX Australia from the Sunday night after getting home. Find it below.

What a weekend. Thanks ‪#‎PAXAus‬ team, attendees, for such a positive vibe & especially everyone who said hi or came to the 3 panels I managed to swindle my way onto!

Just walking the event and chatting to people was great, so many cool things going on and people having fun. Having the time to stop and get a detailed look at something, or take in a panel, is what enlivens any con, and I felt like PAX was set up to make this feel easier to do. The exhibit hall was big, impressive, loud, vertical and cool. The marquee walkways between sections was genius and made it feel inclusive and cohesive. The food vendors were actually really good (MRBURGER!), and the Big Top area was actually relaxing, fun, energising, all the same time, with the mix of bean bags to chill out on, console games to play, and the constant murmur of people enjoying themselves at tabletop. It also had heaters. Oh man.

Had a great response to all of the panels – a real highlight and privilege to run two and be a guest on one.

A panel wrap up and shoutouts:

The Anime and Gaming panel on the Friday really set me on a high note, so many cool questions, people were really engaged and interested. From what felt like a fun, niche subject, to what was a packed out session to which we got heaps of good feedback, its clearly something people felt a strong positive response to. I think we’ll definitely have to do this one again.
Working at the Madman booth all Friday was a treat, even 5 weeks on the trot of doing cons, thanks to my colleagues and the enthusiastic attendees.
Big props to the panelists who joined me, Kwenton Bellette, Nathan Robert Cocks, T-Rex Jones, Jason O’Callaghan, Bradley D-Yoshii Jolly – what a smart bunch. I think we have video and audio of this one that we can piece together, so this will be fun to revisit.

On Saturday the Crafting a Game for the Otaku Crowdwas a treat, taking some of the anime panel themes but more strongly focusing on Japanese game development, thanks to special guest Miyauchi-san, of Omega Force, producer of the Dynasty Warriors games. Was really fascinating, and fun to be part of essentially a panel interview of the guest. The search for refinement and perfection in Japanese development was so intriguing, I had many questions to ask myself. Thanks heaps James Kozanecki for inviting me on the panel, Paul Houlihan for erudite, interesting and well crafted hosting, and Brad Jolly again for detailed knowledge! This was great.

Finally today, the State of Play: Competitive Gaming and Esportspanel was a rewarding one to be part of, touching on such an indepth topic was always going to be tricky to contain in an hour. Focusing on the organisers/organisations running events now felt like the right way to go, and sharing positive stories on the scene was really fun. I hope it serves as a good conversation starter and inspires some collaboration. BIG thank you and much credit to the participation of panelists Nick Vanzetti, Jessie Vonangel Rozema, Alex Walker, Mark West and Derek Reball, great contributions. Great to talk to and see many other fine esports people at the show and panel who contributed in some way. Working together, we can build it stronger